Categories: Auto Shows

The Car Show premieres tonight on SPEED, and I don’t know about you, but we’re pretty excited about it. The Car Show is hosted by comedian and car fanatic Adam Carolla, Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive journalist Dan Neil, founder of “TheSmokingTire.com” Matt Farah and former co-host of The Best Damn Sports Show and NBA champion John Salley. Not a bad cast.

The oddity that is the Covini C3A became the first six-wheeled supercar to make an appearance at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The insect of supercars attracted much attention at the event, leaving people wondering why the Italian automaker chose to build a car with two extra wheels.

Are you the type of guy or gal that gets all excited and drooly over a crossover? If so, Infiniti's got just the drug you need—a slow, half-year teaser campaign for its upcoming JX crossover concept. If not, well, you're just an average person, because who's really that excited for yet another luxury crossover?

Don't get me wrong; I like teaser campaigns. When the car is something worth teasing, something like the Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4. I don't even mind them if it's a new production model that people are particularly excited about. But who really gets that excited about a crossover concept?

One day, if I ever became incredibly rich, I'm going to take a supercar tour of the world. It seems like every major country has a supercar these days, and it would be fun to test them one by one to see which nationality offers the best combination of power, speed, handling, engineering, design, comfort, etc. Then I'd purchase my self-tested winner (or maybe winners) and have it shipped back here to my massive garage in the U.S.

That tour will soon have to include a stop down under, because he Joss JP1 (aka Australia's supercar) is moving closer to production. A prototype version was recently shown at the Australian International Motor Show.

The Australian International Motor Show is typically just a tad too far 'down under' to play out like a Geneva or Paris in terms of scores of awesome concepts, supercars and new production models. But don't think there's no hot, new hardware coming out of Melbourne. The show is going on now, and to prove that there are some exciting dream cars on our favorite island continent, Ford Australia's tuning arm, Ford Performance Vehicles, debuted a fully black Mustang that it calls its "first-ever concept car."

RM Auctions—the firm that brought you the megamillion-dollar Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este sale in Como, Italy I covered in an earlier feature—is bringing its show stateside as part of the festivities surrounding the newly-renamed "Concours d’Elegance of America" being held at The Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth, MI, at the end of July.

The Concours—formerly known only as the “Concours d'Elegance” and held for years at the historic Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester, MI—expanded in both physical size and overall aspirations, leading to the switch in name and venue, though not necessarily in that order.

Now there’s not only a spacious former Catholic seminary within which the auction and certain show events can be held, but a neighboring 27-hole golf course upon which the “33rd Annual Concours d’Elegance of America” can sprawl on Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. [Admission is $25, including parking, shuttle and program book, in case you were wondering.]

Jaguar—in the finest fighting-shape it's been in since the days of its world-ruling D-Types, continues to raise the performance bar only to use it as just another rung on its ladder to ever-greater heights of vehicular ass-whuppin'.

Latest in this powerful-product onslaught is the 2012 XKR-S, which—along with a variety of other vintage and modern Jags—will represent the sign of the cat at the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed where the brand is “honored as the featured marque.”

Though billed as “the fastest Jaguar in a generation,” the XKR-S will nonetheless have some seriously stiff competition from its predecessors during the event’s most famous feature, the “action on the notorious Goodwood Hill.”

Though the “grownup” version of Merriam-Webster.com offers a definition of the word “allure,” it’s their kid-oriented “Word Central” that nails it: “allure (verb): to try to attract or influence by offering what seems to be a benefit or pleasure; (noun): power of attraction.”

And when it comes to the “pull” anyone conscious will feel from these automobiles, a truer word has never been selected than that one when used in the title for the Portland Art Museum's “The Allure of the Automobile," a gathering of over a dozen of the finest sheetmetal sirens ever produced that you can enjoy from now until Sept. 11.

I hear that it’s important to the highest of high-end stores that they set up shop “where the money is” to succeed, and in these United States that place/street is Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California.

This storied street is known around the world for its incredibly expensive yet relatively frivolous things, so it’s no wonder that it would be chosen to host a high fallutin’ car show. And if you had to pick the most expensive, yet least practical cars, chances are your first fifty or so would be Italian.

So the 2011 Rodeo Drive Concours d’Elegance theme (“The Art of Italian Motoring”) and its choice of Fiat as the event’s “honored marque” brings everything full-circle. And with an expected 125 “vintage Italian cars on display” at the free event Sunday, June 19th (Father’s Day!) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., what’s outside of the glass of the street’s superlux stores will be worth more than what they have within.

At the Geneva Motor Show this past March, Rolls Royce made a rather strong impression with the 102EX, an electric ultra-premium. The move made some wonder whether Rolls may just cut its otherwise atrocious fuel economy numbers with a fully electric production version. At the time, Rolls would commit only to the fact that it would test the waters for an EV's potential. Apparently, those waters turned up pretty chilly, because Rolls has moved an EV off the table for the time being.

According to anAuto Evolution report based on a conversation with CEO Torsten Mueller-Otvos, Rolls has officially sidelined the EV because it doesn't believe that it makes sense at the moment. It's not so much that customers aren't interested in a premium EV, or that there was a tepid reaction to the 102EX, it's that Rolls doesn't think an EV fits its customer base very well.

For reasons not clearly explained, the Guggenheim Museum in New York will end its 12-year stewardship over what is easily among the top 10 most expensive BMWs on Earth—the 1979 BMW M1Pro Car painted by artist Frank Stella for late racer Peter Gregg—when it is offered for sale by Bonhams during its Quail Lodge auction event Aug. 18-19 in Carmel, Calif.

[If you thought that sentence was convoluted, just wait for the car’s historical run-down I’m about to get into…]